“Kingswood, October 6, 1768.
“Dear Patty,—You do not consider, money never stays with me: it would burn me if it did. I throw it out of my hands as soon as possible, lest it should find a way into my heart. Therefore, you should have spoken to me while I was in London, and before Miss Lewen’s money flew away. However, I know not, but I may still spare you £5, provided you will not say, ‘I will never ask you again,’ because this is more than you can tell; and you must not promise more than you can perform.
“Oh how busy are mankind! and about what trifles! Things that pass away as a dream! Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, but to love and serve God.
“I am, dear Patty, your ever affectionate,
“John Wesley.”[683]
It is pleasant to be loved; it is painful to be hated and despised. Wesley had as great a share of both hatred and affection as most who have ever lived. For more than thirty years, he had been the butt of malice, as well as the object of Christian sympathy and love. He was the cynosure towards which both loving and malignant eyes were turned. This state of things still continued. Much has been already said concerning Methodist persecution; much yet remains unsaid.
In 1766, a translation of Formey’s Ecclesiastical History, in two volumes, was given to the public, and had attached to it an appendix, containing “an account of Mr. Wesley and his sect.” The translator tries to write fairly, but still speaks of Wesley’s doctrines as issuing “in spiritual pride,” and as having a dangerous influence on “virtuous practice.”
The Gospel Magazine, also, deemed it its pious duty to publish “A Dialogue between the Foundery and the Tabernacle, occasioned by the late publication of the Rev. Mr. John Wesley’s sermon upon ‘Imputed Righteousness.’” The Tabernacle, of course, bombards the Foundery, and thinks that it wins a glorious victory. Wesley “writes neither with the wisdom of the scholar, the judgment of the divine, the ability of the critic, nor with a becoming mildness and moderation. His principles also are very erroneous.”
Laurence Sterne, clever but self conceited, pretentiously generous, but sensually selfish, published his “Yorick’s Sermons and Meditations,” and adorned them by describing Methodist preachers as “illiterate mechanics, much fitter to make a pulpit than to get into one.”
The Rev. John Tottie, D.D., archdeacon of Worcester, and chaplain in ordinary to his majesty, at the request of the clergy, issued “Two Charges, delivered in the diocese of Worcester, in the years 1763 and 1766: one against the Papists, and the other against the Methodists”; the reverend archdeacon advancing the postulatum, that “the tenets and practices of the Methodist teachers are conformable to those of the papists, and have a direct tendency to lead men into popery.”